City rivals need lots of votes

December 9, 2012

When voting concluded last week, USA Today's contest to find the biggest high school rivalries in America confirmed what we already knew: that the biggest prep rivalry in West Virginia is between Parkersburg High and Parkersburg South.

The PHS-South matchup easily won out over Morgantown-University and Capital-George Washington to advance to the North Regional competition, which runs until 11 a.m. Wednesday.

Now for the bad news. We're getting smoked. Of the 13 rivalries competing for the regional championship, we stand in seventh place, with just 2.033 percent of the vote as of Saturday afternoon.

Unless things change, it is a two-way race between St. Johnsbury Academy and Lyndon Institute, who represent Vermont, and Peddle School and Blair Academy, who represent New Jersey. They have 34.994 and 29.233 percent, respectively.

The North Region winner will advance to the four-state national competition. The winning schools in the national competition will receive $10,000.

It's basically the same concept as ESPN's TitleTown, where Parkersburg was the national runnerup.

Unless we start doing a lot of clicking, we're going to take a licking.

Bowl games: No sport gets me more fired-up than college football.

And there is no better time to be a college football fan than bowl season.

This year, we have 35 bowl games. While many sports fans will say that is too many, so what if it is? I say there are far too many reality shows on TV, but I don't have to watch any of them.

Bowl games are a reward for teams for the players and coaches who were successful during the regular season.

Finish 6-6 and you will be relegated to a pre-Christmas bowl that likely won't take in one of America's garden spots.

Win a double-digit amount of games and you'll be playing in a warm-weather city in January.

The two teams of local interest headed to bowl games -West Virginia University and Ohio University -both will play the weekend in between Christmas and New Year's .

Ohio will meet Louisiana-Monroe at 2 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 28, in the Independence Bowl in Shreveport, La. This isn't a good matchup for the Bobcats. First, ULM will be playing in its home state, and thus will be the "home'' team. Plus, the Warhawks are a tough draw. Just as Ohio opened its season with a stunning win over Penn State, ULM went to Arkansas and beat the Razorbacks. The next two weeks, the Warhawks lost at Auburn by three points and at Baylor by five. The good news for Ohio is they will have a chance to heal their many injuries that plagued them during the season. This should be an entertaining game.

So should West Virginia's matchup with Syracuse at 3:15 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 29, in the Pinstripe Bowl at Yankee Stadium. The good news for WVU is this is a Big 12 squad playing a Big East team. The bad news for the Mountaineers is that Syracuse has won their last two meetings, in 2010 (19-14) and 2011 (49-23).

WVU is just a 4-point favorite in this game.

Considering the Mountaineers' offensive weapons and the fact WVU scored 70 points in the Orange Bowl last year, that seems awfully low. But look at the last two scores against Syracuse, and that should send off alarm bells.

The bowl games begin next Saturday and don't end until the BCS National Championship Game on Jan. 7.

Make sure you've got new batteries for your remote control.

As far as college football is concerned, this is indeed the most wonderful time of the year.